Nowadays, teleconferencing is a widely accepted means of communication during meetings in professional environments. Typically, teleconference participants gather together in a room around a so-called “tripod” (a teleconference device). Each participant carries his/her own phone, which lies unused on the desk around the tripod. Everyone leans forward to the tripod in order to listen to the incoming call and in order to be better understood when speaking to the far-end party at the other side of the telephone line.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional teleconferencing system. The conventional teleconferencing system 100 comprises a so-called tripod 104 which communicates with a far-end communication device 102 through a global communication channel 106. The global communication channel 106 may, for example, be realized as a landline connection, a cellular network connection, a Voice over IP (VoIP) connection, a satellite connection, or a combination thereof.
Conventional teleconferencing systems suffer from a number of problems. For example, it is quite common that a far-end party is difficult to understand, because the room in which the tripod is located is crowded or because the room has bad acoustic properties. Also, it is often difficult to be understood by the far-end party, because the user who speaks is positioned far from the tripod. Furthermore, there is almost no freedom of movement for the participants and there is often a lack of personal space during the conference call. There is also a lack of control over the volume levels for each participant in the conference call. Furthermore, personal live call recording is not possible, and the personal status of the individual in a conference call cannot be seen. In general, there is a lack of information about who has entered or left the conference call. Furthermore, personal equipment, such as headphones, cannot be used, and the conference session cannot be recorded locally by a participant. Finally, the speech processing (e.g. Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Background Noise Suppression, and Audio Gain Control) is sub-optimal, because it is performed by the tripod, which disregards the location of the speakers in the teleconference. Moreover, since everyone speaks to the tripod, the “Hands Free” or “Speakerphone” mode is mandatory.
Similar problems exist in other communication systems, such as standard peer-to-peer telephone calls. In a standard peer-to-peer telephone call, it is not possible for another user to join the call or to listen in, but it would certainly be useful to enable such functionality.